


Radio Static

by knittedwithstars



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Crying, Grief, Kinda, M/M, Sickfic, author's shit at tagging, lotsa angst, probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-07 09:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14668254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knittedwithstars/pseuds/knittedwithstars
Summary: Jack’s lost the world. He can’t lose him too.





	1. 1

“Come on, Jack, please… Just come home.”

The plea threw Jack off completely. His previous track of rambling died in his throat, finger twitching over the talk button, tongue sticky and useless in his dry mouth. He stared dumbfounded at the blinking lights for a moment, worrying his lip and scrabbling to collect his thoughts while the radio static hissed impatiently. 

“I… I can’t yet, Gene. I’ve told you, with father, and the state of this place, I just… can’t, okay?”

“Jack,  _ you’ve done all you can, _ ” Emogene tsked, edging with an irritation and frustration that stung. Jack couldn’t say he was too surprised. His sister had been, more subtly, trying to make this confrontation through the whole discussion— Jack’s stubbornness and apparent aloofness had just pushed her to breaking. Still… he wasn’t quite prepared for it. 

“Dad’s not going anywhere,” she sighs in his silence, “I’m sure even  _ he’s  _ not insane enough to go out there— if he was able to break containment in the first place, which by your account, is secure as ever. And Parsons… what else can you do, Jack? Everyone’s… gone or dead, already. What else is there?”

  


Jack continued to stew in the deathly quiet as he ran  through her words. She was right, of course. Nothing she said was a revelation. After sorting and packing supplies, which was practically already finished, Parsons was nothing more than an imposing storefront to Lorenzo’s prison; which was still in a perfect lockdown and was even further padded with guards.  On all technicalities, he had no more business here. 

_ However…  _

“We’re handling ourselves pretty well out here,” Emogene continued on, her voice losing its venom for something softer, tireder. Jack inhaled and leaned into his radio tensely. 

“But Mother’s not doing the best. I think she’s starting to lose her grip on things. Between worrying over you and Father, losing everyone, being cooped up in here for weeks…”

Jack could feel a heaviness grow between them as Emogene let loose another sigh, and on his part, that was  _ guilt.  _ So much guilt, in these past couple of days. New aches in his chest that had managed to stir up the sediment that Jack had spent decades settling. And he was handling it about as well as a pebble in a paper shredder. 

“Jack, we need to come together  _ as a family  _ and figure out our place in this new world. You know things aren’t just going to go back to normal, right? I know, you always hated that ‘head of the house’ shit that Mother tries to push on you, but right now, we actually need it. This new world, without paperwork or travelling or diplomacy… the routine we’ve been doing for over two hundred years just went up in flames. And, safe to say, we’re all feeling a little lost… So we need you here. You can go back once we get things settled, alright? Right now, you need to be home.” 

Jack swallowed and pinched at the bridge of his nose as his gears whirred.  _ She was right. Absolutely right. And this was  _ his  _ responsibility. But… she didn’t know. He had a choice to make. A choice he wasn’t sure he could bear.  _

  


“Jack? C’mon, are you even listening? Jack…”

“Y-Yes, Gene,” he finally clicked the button and answered crackily, internally cursing the building constriction in his throat. 

“I-I understand, and I… I will try to come home, soon.”

“Why not tomorrow or tonight?” she whipped back. She knew she had him on the hook. “Just finish whatever you’re doing, grab a few guards, and come back. I’m being completely serious, Jack.” 

Sometimes, Jack needed a swift kick in the ass from Emogene to be reminded of what exactly he was trying to accomplish, and it would set his head straight; this, unfortunately, was not one of those times. (Or, at least, he wouldn’t admit that it was.) The jittering of his legs was getting more sporadic and the ruts in his inner lip deeper as he tried dredging up some acceptable excuse,  _ something— _

He was relieved, for a foolish microsecond, when Emogene made a small noise and suddenly changed subjects. 

“Speaking of guards— how is Edward doing? Not well enough to whip some sense into you, I guess. I’d love to talk to him though, if he’s available…”

Jack was rather abruptly unrelieved.

His nerves went stiff with dread. This was the one subject he’d been hoping to dance around and avoid the entire conversation, and he’d thought he’d been brilliantly successful, until now. With it sitting in his lap and the radio static beckoning. A flood of emotions hit him as his finger twitched over the trigger, and he wanted to yell, or cry, or something, but he forced himself to weakly chuckle and mutter, 

“I’m afraid not, Gene. His condition is… very poor. I…” He managed to click off just so it didn’t catch the strangled noise that choked out of his throat. He gave himself a sharp shake and took a broad breath to straighten himself, letting his chest ease slightly. 

“Don’t think he’ll make it?” the static hummed.

“There’s… nothing more I can do for him. He seems to be in a coma, for now, but he’s still slowly getting worse. Whatever’s happening to him… I don’t know what it is, or how to treat it.”

“Hm. I’m sorry, Jack… Is  _ he  _ the reason you’re staying there?”

Any attempt Jack had made at steeling himself crumbled with that accusation, and he couldn’t even scramble to pick up the pieces as she marched on, softer but as demanding, 

“What’s going on, Jack? I just want to know. Is _that_ what you’re caught up on? I don’t get it. I know he was damn good, and it’s a shame, but we still have plenty of underlings to fill his place, right?”

  


The dismissiveness of her suggestion, no matter how unintentioned, was a nail to his poor heart. Being reminded that his family didn’t share his sentiment and gratitude for their head bodyguard was less than encouraging. And with a fried brain and no calming voice or thoughtful smiles for the past week, it was getting harder to hold onto for himself… 

He fumbled and tossed up words in his head, but after a few seconds the best he could mumble out was the dumb and blatant, 

“I– He… He’s important to me, Emogene.”

He felt tired. A bone-deep tired. Defeated. He was really peeking over the edge into the abyss now, wasn’t he?

Emogene’s pause was heavy, and her genial snicker heavier. 

“I know you were pretty close, Jack, but… Well, don’t tell me  _ now  _ that all the teasing I did over you two was  _ actually  _ true.”

Emogene’s light humor was lost on Jack as the panic set in. Jack was quite practiced in twisting and withholding words, but outright lie he could not. He liked to think that it was the scientist in him, refusing to refute facts. And that he and Edward had been romantically involved for nearly a decade, covert to even the observant gaze of Emogene, was an objective fact. 

“Jack?”

He was sure his silence spoke all it needed to; although, for something so jarring, she might need his absolute confirmation. He felt like he needed it himself sometimes, which would be swiftly answered with an action that left his lips tingling and smiling like an idiot… 

His hand flinched sharply and snapped him back to focus. 

“Emogene,” he answered back, slow and deliberate. He tried to push out something else, but then felt like that was enough. 

“Oh… Jack… Are you being serious?”

_ It’s the apocalypse, Gene. I don’t think it could get much more serious than this,  _ he didn’t snap. Instead he let out a long exhale as his emotions shuddered uncertainly. There was a great weight being lifted off his shoulders, while new ones piled on.  _ He was finally telling his dear sister about his secret, extremely valuable relationship. Hurrah! But only  _ after  _ the object of his love was laying dying in a bed, maybe to never wake up again. So, not so celebratory. In fact, he felt quite, quite sad about the matter. _

But he managed to find some humor and tsked, 

“I always wondered how sincere your teasing was, Gene. Is it really that surprising?”

“Oh… Oh, Jack, oh no…” 

On some distant platform, Jack was impressed with himself. It took a lot to surprise his sister these days. 

“Was…  _ Is  _ it, like, an ‘official’ sort of thing? Or…”

“We’ve been together for nine years, and about seven months… So I’d lend it some credibility.”

Jack could practically hear Emogene holding and shaking her head through the hissing crackle. 

“Jack…  _ God damn it,  _ really? You had to drop this on me  _ now.  _ Why in the hell didn’t you… No, nevermind. We’ll talk about it later— right now, I can… I can come over there, and help you get things sorted out. Okay? I’ll just get—”

Jack stiffened, and rapidly began to shove together half-formed ideas and uncertainties into a plan before Emogene could make such an absurd suggestion on his behalf.  _ Well, she  _ was _ the kick in the ass he needed, after all. _

“No.  _ No—  _ I-I’ll… I’ll come home at the end of the week. No matter what happens, or the state of things… Friday, I’ll have everything packed and I’ll head home. I promise.”

“No, wait, Jack, let’s talk about this. I just want to—”

Jack bit his lip, then turned the radio’s power knob with a sharp click. 


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightly Routine.

Jack stared at the dead radio for a long while, until it nearly blurred into the growing shadows and the chilly air settled in. 

_Oh, Lord, he’d never hear the end of it for that._

He sighed and sat back in the creaky chair, chewing at his thumb and looking to the dusty window while emotions swarmed and burned and throbbed in his chest. _That was it, then. He’d admitted defeat, he’d be abandoning Edward in a few days… But Emogene was right. His family needed him. And Edward would have, of course, chastised his ear off for staying behind this long. Family first, always._

_Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell,_ Jack thought bitterly. 

He scribbled out a vague note on his clipboard to contact the guards stationed at the Cabot estate about the incoming situation. Then he trailed back to the window, barely able to make out anything but the simmering glow of burning Boston in the distance. With the unending gloom that had shrouded the sky since the bombs dropped, the days were short, and time was easy to lose track of. It was creeping into late afternoon, and twilight was quickly fading to black.  
For a spare moment, Jack had the thought of letting the shadows envelop him, letting himself sit and dissipate in the dark and quiet until he could pretend that the world hadn’t ended and his family wasn’t stranded like some freakish sole survivors— then he shivered, grabbed and clicked on the lantern, and stood to exit his office and begin his nightly routine. 

 

Jack used to figure that everyone had only called Parsons ‘creepy’ and ‘unsettling’ for its title— many of those blabberers had never bothered to step a foot inside the place. It was a little old and a little drab, a bit like Jack himself, but it was clean and well maintained, and his staff was always praised for their friendliness. Really, the scariest thing in Parsons was the Cabot family themselves. 

_However,_ now maybe, Jack could see it, as the dusk barely illuminated the bleak concrete and stark metal fixtures that wrapped the space, and the floorboards groaned under his feet. Of course, the heavy damage that Parsons had sustained during and since the blast wasn’t helping its case. It was quite a mess now— many items left deserted in the upheaval of the evacuation, decades of dust and loose debris shaken from the foundation and strewn over the floor, and most of the windows shattered and the walls cracked and splintered from the quake that’d shaken the building to its core. And with the clutter, and darkness, and the muffled silence, it hardly felt like the hospital he’d been running for over a century. On multiple occasions Jack had gotten too lost in his head and found himself somewhere so upturned or damaged that he struggled to recognize where he was, which, especially in fading light, was no less than heart-poundingly frightening. 

Fortunately, he was too focused to let that happen tonight. He walked briskly through the administrative lobby, pausing to give a nodding regard to the weary guard stationed by the sunroom door. He had a trace of the thought to ask how the squad was holding up in Edward’s absence, but his heart clenched against it and he opted to clear his throat and move on. 

A cool breeze swept over him as he stepped into the open room, glass crunching under his feet. He frowned and looked up from the slimy fountain to the shattered ceiling above, all twisted metal and fractured glass— a grim reminder that this place was one misstep from collapsing. Edward had pressed the matter on him many times.   
_It’s not safe here, Jack. This place could crumble at any moment, Jack. Seriously, Jack. Your stubbornness is going to get us both killed, Jack._

Jack huffed and chuckled joylessly to himself as he roughed a hand over the bark of the withering trees. Here he was, his bodyguard in a coma as a result of giving his _life_ for Jack, and he was mocking him in his head. Some lover he was, huh. And a dirty hypocrite too, he knew.

More sludge of rawing emotions seeped into his chest and threatened to teeter him, so he shook his head to concentration and quickened his pace to the opposite doors that lead to the asylum wing. But he couldn’t help but wonder, as he began ascending the stairs with careful footing, if those medics were still holed up in commons… After a large section of the second floor collapse, killing quite a few and injuring dozens more, some goldenhearts had stayed behind to care for the patients that couldn’t be evacuated— the disabled, the chronically ill, the severely wounded, knowing full well that they were risking their lives to only ease and prolong the inevitable for those patients. However, Jack hadn’t told them to stay or go, he bade them to do as they wished— they may have abandoned their efforts by now, for all he knew. Like the critical patients left to die and rot in the sublevels. All he and Edward were told, when they arrived, was to not go down there. Edward did anyway to complete a thorough search of the premises, and he didn’t speak about it further to Jack. 

It was all, as Emogene had eloquently put it, “a depressing shitshow.”

When Edward was by his side, he had the strength to check on the lingerers, patrol the grounds with him, help dislodge rubble, the like. But these past days… it took overwhelming nervous energy and dread to get him out of bed, and he strictly spent his time sorting and taking inventory of supplies, tending to Edward, taking notes, or contacting Emogene. He just felt… terribly alone, and scared into a paralysis. Edward had always joked that he was the muscle in the relationship, which was less of a joke than absolutely true, and it felt like Edward had taken Jack’s supports and strength and will with him to… wherever it is he went. 

Jack swallowed as he paused at the peak of the stairs with a hard grip on the rail, his mind wandering towards dismal thoughts where he had no capacity to stop it. 

 

Edward knew what was going to happen to him; and Jack _definitely_ knew. They both knew and silently acknowledged it in their shared gaze when Edward first suggested the run to Parsons. But Jack wasn’t quite thinking straight at the time, rationality out the window with the rest of the world, and when Edward insisted that he’d be fine, Jack believed him. His dumb, stress-addled brain really believed that Edward was tough enough to bare the nuclear wreckage and withstand tenfold lethal doses of radiation, because he said so. Of course he could, Edward was a pillar, always making the right calls and executing the right moves, always dependable, immovable and _unbreakable_. He was the one who formed a plan before the bombs hit, and rushed the family down into the storage within a minute of the announcement, while Jack had been stunned in a stupor. Jack would probably _still_ be there, dazed and aimless as he surveyed the ruins of the world, if Edward hadn’t pulled his team together, talked some sense into Jack, and led them on to do _something_ about it. 

When they arrived a week later and started sorting out the chaos, Edward still asserted that he was fine and things were going to be okay, despite trekking through untamed fires and radioactive ash for days. So Jack still wearily believed him. Until suddenly things were not okay.

It was about a week and a half ago that Edward finally admitted that he was feeling a bit tired and nauseous. Just something casually referenced over dinner, just something to keep an eye on, Jack. To which Jack felt guilty, that he’d been so scattered and caught up in analytics that he hadn’t noticed how pale and worn Edward look. He fussed over him a bit and made him rest and drink what they could spare, but he tried not to worry too much, because Edward said he was fine. 

Too little too late. Edward’s health took a dive over the next two days. He couldn’t keep anything down, he was weak and tremoring, he was a bit delirious and having difficulty voicing his thoughts… Finally, when it got to the point where he stumbled into Jack’s office barely able to stand, he let Jack prod him, and Jack realized he should’ve been much, much more worried. Edward was feverish, severely dehydrated, breathing shallow, with an ache pulsing through his body that was steadily growing worse. And what had really set Jack into a panic— Edward had looked _scared_ , fists curled in Jack’s coat and mumbling vague apologies. Jack didn’t even give the time to berate Edward’s damned bravado as he half-dragged him to the couch, and kissed his forehead as soon as he settled with the promise that he’d be right back with supplies. When he returned a few minutes later, Edward had fallen into a seemingly peaceful sleep, but Jack couldn’t rouse him. He wasn’t able to since. That was six days ago. 

 

Jack’s musing trickled away to background noise as he entered his destined hallway. He directed power to this section but the emergency lights were poor compensation, and he startled a bit to see a tall figure slouched against the wall at the far end of the hall— but he relaxed with a strained sigh upon recognizing the guard in the lamplight, who calmly waved his cigarette at him; he must’ve stuck around past his shift for Jack’s return. 

“Evening, Doc,” he greeted him as Jack carefully stepped through the debris. Kamron, he believed it was, one of Edward’s favored inferiors. The first one to step up when Jack radioed in that their manager was down. 

“Evening… Any news?”

“Nothin’ exciting. We sighted a medium-sized group headin’ south early this mornin’, but they ended up skirting Parsons completely. Heh, must’ve been from around here.”

Jack dipped his head in understanding but his mouth thinned. They both knew what Jack wanted to hear, and Jack wondered at what point he’d just stop asking. 

 

“Mm, speaking of which,” the guard caught his attention, “You make any plans for leavin’, yet? Boss’s orders still stand, y’know. He didn’t want you staying around for much longer, especially for… Well, I can escort you back home at any time, Dr. Cabot.”

Jack hesitated as the weight of what he’d promised Emogene settled in. Then he nodded wearily while his heart sunk to new lows.

“Yes, actually… I’m planning to leave this weekend, Friday preferably. Do you think you could be ready by then?”

He didn’t miss the brief flash of relief over Kamron’s face. 

“Course, sir. Just tell me how much we’re haulin’ back— we’ve got some men to spare but we’d rather not attract attention. Also, Ed handed off that map you’d made, so hopefully there won’t be too many hiccups in getting you back home safely.”

Jack nodded again but he probably looked absolutely pathetic, as mournful thoughts swarmed his head.  
 _He was really just going to leave him here? What if he woke up? What if he woke up and no one was here to take care of him? What if he woke up for a bit, then went back under… What if he never got to say goodbye?_

Jack felted rooted in place as Kamron watched him over his dragging cigarette, Jack studying the wall and distantly trying to fight back the prickling under his eyes, when Kamron cleared his throat and said softly, 

“Hey… We’re going to take care of him while you’re gone, Doc. We ain’t lettin’ him go easy either. Promise.” 

Jack stared at the man owlishly for a few tense seconds before he broke into a cracked, laughing smile, in spite of everything. 

While Jack usually didn’t particularly keep up with his staff after the application process, unless they had a certain alignment of interests, he was on good terms with Edward’s team as a whole— especially after Edward became a bit loose-lipped about their relationship. Jack had been furious and aghast at first, but after the _scoundrel_ convinced Jack that these individuals who’d been handpicked to guard Jack’s life were qualified to keep a secret, Jack warmed up to the idea. Their special relationship was undoubtedly refreshing, where he and Edward could be themselves around others. He would admit, it made the exclusive Cabot employee Christmas parties much more fun and interesting… 

“I… Th-thank you, Kamron. That… means the world to me, truly. I trust you. Thank you.”

“It’s Kyle. But no worries, Doc.”

Jack huffed an apologetic chuckle and gave _Kyle_ a grateful squeeze on his arm, sharing a brief glance of understanding with him before ducking his head and heading on to the door. He blinked away a stray tear as he gingerly turned the handle, aware of Kyle’s quietly retreating footsteps. He exhaled, then inhaled a deep breath before lightly pushing the door open, trying his damnedest to hold on to the smile that Kyle had given him. 

Because now came the hard part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this is more of a transition chapter. But the next one, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> Comments of any sort are definitely welcomed and really help in encouraging me to write <3

**Author's Note:**

> Haha I live off salt and angst. 
> 
> It could easily be a oneshot, but I split it up so that I'd actually have the patience to get it done. So it won't be much longer, and hopefully it won't take long to get out. Encouragement is always very appreciated :)
> 
> I'm operating at https://beating-synth-heart.tumblr.com/ if you wanna hmu


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